Ship was approaching Esperance at the end of a voyage from Florida
loaded with fertilizer.
She had to pass thru the incompletely surveyed Recherche Archipelago.
She struck on a shoal that was uncharted,
but the Australians had issued a correction
which noted this shallow area without giving the depth.
This correction had not been entered on the Sanko Harvest's charts.

source

CTX

type

C

volume

material

dead

31

link

The Master could have taken a 20 mile longer, safer route;
but he was already behind schedule,
and under pressure to get to port.

A local newspaper report (Time, 1995-07-24) interpreted the ATSB report as follows.
According to the official accident report,
the second officer misread the English language map [sic],
and thought the blank area on his chart indicated very deep water.
implying that the cause was poor English.
There is no such inference in the actual report.
Nor did the paper even mention the fact
that the Australians had done a poor job
of charting this area.

This was a 175 m long ship.
She hit at 10.5 knots, 5.5 hours after high tide.
Her draft was slightly over 10 m.
The outer bottom was breached back to No 5 hold.
The LOP was at least 140 m.
It appears from the divers sketch
that the shoal she hit had a depth of about 9 m
at the time she grounded,
Apparently, the inner bottom was not breached initially.
But the damage was such she could not be refloated.

700 ton spill which oiled
beaches of Cape Le Grand National Park.
Fertilizer was soluable.
Now a dive site.